Wet wipes are used for a variety of purposes such as cleaning household surfaces and personal body cleansing. The substrate from which the wet wipe is manufactured can be selected from a wide variety of materials. Frequently, nonwoven substrates are used to produce wet wipes due to their desirable properties and low cost of manufacture. Recently, more emphasis is being placed on providing wet wipes having the ability to disperse when disposed of in the toilet bowl after use. Several municipalities have banned the disposal of non-dispersible wet wipes in municipal sewer systems. The non-dispersible wet wipes can plug typical sewage handling components such as pipes, pumps, lift stations, or screens causing operational issues for the treatment plant.
When manufacturing a dispersible wet wipe, it is often difficult to achieve sufficient in-use strength while also providing desirable dispersibility characteristics. Making the wet wipe stronger often leads to poor dispersibility or the inability of the wet wipe to disperse or break up. Making the wet wipe weaker provides enhanced dispersibility characteristics, but jeopardizes in-use performance requirements because the wet wipe could rip or tear during use. Therefore, what is needed is a dispersible wet wipe structure that has improved in-use strength while achieving desirable dispersibility characteristics.